It looks like the FBI is serious about looking for "dangerous" items on the internet, and their efforts may have some pretty strange results.
Ralph Omholt, an instructor pilot who is qualified 737s, bought a CD with flight manuals for the 737 on E-bay, and ended up getting subpoenad by a Federal Grand Jury for his efforts.
Understandably, the government doesn't want sensitive information falling into the hands of terrorists, but a flight manual? Please. As if they won't find another way to get that kind of information.
Not to mention that there a lots of people who have a legitimate need to have things like flight manuals for various aircraft -- like pilots. There are thousands of licensed pilots in this country, are they now no longer able to get information about the aircraft they fly, or dream of flying.
There have been loads of articles by and about general aviation pilots who get a chance to finally fly an airliner. Are those guys (gals) suddenly dangerous?
This isn't restricted just to aviation. What about Information Security? Do we stop discussing security holes, defects, and bugs to keep the terrorists from finding out about them? How, then, do we fix problems?
What about the people who enjoy firearm based sports? Do we keep them from competing or learning about their weapons. Do we tell them that we can't self-load their ammunition?
What about Chemistry classes? How do we keep them from learning about anything dangerous? You can do lots of nasty things with the items available to the average high school student.
The point here isn't that we should let everyone have free, unfettered access to all the information about all things -- I don't really need to know how a W-80 nuclear weapon works, but we need to do things that make sense.
Hauling a guy who buys a flight manual isn't one of them.